Internationalizing the Liberal Arts through Linguistic Inclusion is a discussion series designed to raise awareness of and stimulate discussion about more socially just responses to culturolinguistic diversity in the Tri-Co. A series of reading/discussion group meetings over the 2019-20 academic year will focus on three topics: translanguaging, translation, and world Englishes.
The first meeting was held on Nov. 6 at Swarthmore. The second will be held in the early spring semester at ůůֱ²¥, and the third later in the spring at Haverford. The sessions are funded through a Mellon Tri-Co SEED Grant to Betty Litsinger (ůůֱ²¥ Director of Multilingual Writing), Barbara Hall (Haverford Multilingual Development Writing Specialist), and Natalie Mera Ford (Swarthmore Multilingual Writing Specialist).
The overarching goal for the three reading/discussion sessions is to build a stronger web of communication on the internationalized campuses surrounding a series of topics related to multilingual learners. The grant recipients hope to foster wider appreciation of the transcultural cognitive and linguistic fluidity that multilingual writers bring to the Tri-Co community, and to promote faculty exploration of specific ways more equitable perceptions of ELL or L2 students can be translated into pedagogical strategies that respectfully support these learners’ development across the disciplines.
Orienting each meeting around a particular subject—translanguaging, translation, and world Englishes—will allow participants to focus separately on three aspects internationalized higher education that could simultaneously lead to practical teaching innovations and to potential research collaborations.
The discussion sessions are open to the entire Tri-Co community.
Contact Betty Litsinger, blitsinger@brynmawr.edu, for more information.